The typical cook time for a food product such as a fresh medium size pizza through a conventional conveyor oven is approximately 7 minutes. The conveyor oven therefore reduces cooking time as compared to previous ovens such as the deck oven, and also simplifies the cooking procedure because the food product is automatically loaded into and unloaded from the cooking tunnel.
Conveyor ovens typically utilize a continuous open link conveyor belt to transport food products through this heated tunnel, or cooking chamber, which has openings at each end of the oven through which the conveyor belt sufficiently extends in order for the operator to start incoming food product on one end, and retrieve the finished cook product from the other. A standard impingement style conveyor oven typically employs the use of a cooking chamber approximately 70 inches (177.8 cm) long and 32 inches (81.28 cm) wide. For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for a faster cooking, more compact conveyor oven.